'scuttlebutt' is a correct and usable word in written English.
It is an informal noun that means rumors or gossip. Example: "According to the scuttlebutt around the office, the boss is planning to promote someone from our team to a higher position."
Your correspondent has heard the scuttlebutt from diplomats and bankers, and word of it has spread on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.
But if the Memjet technology is as good as the scuttlebutt suggests, it could easily be licensed to market heavyweights like Dell, Panasonic or Samsung.
They have, of course, produced a steady supply of scandalous scuttlebutt, including an alcoholic leader, who was forced to resign in January, and two leadership candidates of ambiguous sexual orientation.
The scuttlebutt is that the aide will step aside in 2010 to make way for an election bid by Mr Biden's son, currently serving in Iraq.
The accident-prone EMI has done better.The scuttlebutt now is that Warner will try to buy EMI from Citigroup, which seized it earlier this year from Terra Firma, another private-equity firm.
The latest scuttlebutt is that Mr Mandelson may instead be promoted to another, less sensitive, cabinet post.
And the scuttlebutt was that Republican Party bigwigs didn't want Mr Huckabee, because he was an outsider.
He sees little of his family; his wife effectively raises their infant daughter single-handedly (and politicians wonder why there is a declining birth rate).As we tuck into our hot curries, we're already knee-deep in political scuttlebutt.
But perhaps that was just projecting: when Mrs Bush was shopping her memoirs, the scuttlebutt was that she was, after all, a bit underwhelming.With the new first lady, Michelle Obama, we won't have to wonder.
THE scuttlebutt over the weekend was that Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John, niece of Ted, is interested in being appointed to the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton is soon to vacate.
Pepys is never so happy as when filing unsubstantiated third-party reports on colleagues, and much of the material that went to make up Aubrey's Brief Lives was little more than scuttlebutt.
